Sponsored by City of Norfolk Department of Economic Development, Cavalier Land, and Draft Services of Virginia.

The nominees are below. Use inside right scroll bar to go through each category. Vote for one nominee per category. (Worth mentioning: votes cast from duplicate IP addresses are noted and tossed out.) Online voting concludes on Nov. 15.

We will present gold, silver and bronze in each category during a free-to-attend awards ceremony Tuesday, December 13 at O’Connor Brewing Company. All proceeds from beer sales will benefit Hope House Foundation.

Awards will be determined by 50% of the outcome coming from readers’ online votes and the other 50% from our secret-shopper panel of beer experts. We will also crown a Brewery of the Year based on a points system where gold medals count as 3 points, silver gains 2 and 1 for bronze.

The last time Veer Magazine spoke with Andrew Shand, it was April 2015, when he was helping Virginia Distillery Co. start producing its own single malt whiskey in Lovingston, about 35 miles south of Charlottesville. Later that year, Virginia Distillery underwent an ownership change, and Shand left. He subsequently traveled around the world—including an extended layover in his native Scotland—but he returned to Virginia in 2016 to help Rick Wasmund, the owner of Copper Fox Distillery, expand his malting and distilling operations to Williamsburg. Shand’s work there is done, and now he’s left again—this time to help build a brand-new distillery at an undisclosed location in Asia. “I can’t tell you what it is,” he told us, “because they want to make a big announcement when I get there.” We caught up with Shand the day before he left the U.S. Here are some highlights from the conversation.

How did Rick take it when you told him you were leaving?

We’d been speaking about it for a little while. Things have slowed down as far as what I can do and what I can build. … It’s far better me go and him taking on two or three salespeople.

What’s your professional opinion of his products?

I think the last batch of rye we did is probably as nice a rye as anyone’s producing in America. … The [single malt] woods are an acquired taste. I think as the wood chips have been in the casks a couple of times—a lot of them are on their third run now—actually it works really, really well because you’re still getting the influence of the wood, but you’ve pulled out a lot of the oil and the tannins and the things that you don’t really want, so I think that it’s definitely improving.

I made my first batch of gin a few weeks ago. It was quite interesting to do it; it was good fun. It’s not as juniper-y as some gins. Most gin’s like someone ramming a Christmas tree down your throat. A lot of the more modern style of gin is coming away from that. It’s gin most people can drink. … We also did a bourbon mash, which is basically moonshine. I made moonshine like I would have if I was in Scotland, and we sold out of it. Everyone was like, “Oh, wow.” You could drink it. It wasn’t like your normal moonshine that makes you go blind and you use to clean windows and things like that. It was really light and smooth. … I was winding them all up, saying it takes a Scotsman to come and teach you to make moonshine.

Do you think you’ll go back to Virginia Distillery at some point in the future and taste that first batch of malt?

I never really like going back to places after I’ve gone. But I watched a bit of “Meet The Distiller” on YouTube, and I thought, “That place is really cool. You did a really good job there.” The two guys that helped me—Jim Taggart and Jeff Fletcher—I sent them the link and said, “We built some place there.” I’ve done a few distilleries, but I think Virginia Distillery—because there was a lot of money behind it—you were allowed to be a bit more ambitious and creative. It was a tight budget, but it was a good budget. It was a budget you could get a bit creative with.

What will you miss about Virginia?

It’s quite funny. I’ve never really taken to Williamsburg, but I loved staying up in Charlottesville. I loved going up in the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Parkway on my bike and cycling. Up in that area, it was a fantastic area to cycle: quiet roads, beautiful scenery. Also, before I came here, I was never really much of a beer drinker, but since I’ve been here, I think the styles of beer suit me better than the ones back home. I’ve visited so many breweries, it’s frightening. I’ve got a beer app; I think I’ve got about 450 beers on it that I’ve tried.

So what are your favorite Virginia breweries?

Well, just because it’s right on my doorstep, Virginia Beer’s probably my favorite. It’s a great place to go and hang out. Brilliant people that are making it. It’s almost like they make beer for me because everything they give me to try—even stuff like dark or heavier beers that I’m not really into—I’ll taste it, and I’ll think, “I could actually drink this.” That’s been my favorite. … The other one is Barry Wood’s place: Wood Ridge Farm Brewery. It’s the best experience that you’ll come across anywhere in Virginia. It’s in Woods Mill—just a few miles north of Lovingston. … One of the most amazing people I’ve met.

What about Virginia distilleries? Do you have any favorites besides Copper Fox?

There’s a wee guy up in Charlottesville: Ivar Aass. He’s got Spirit Lab Distillery. It’s tiny—really, really tiny. I just love the fact that he’s got no funding whatsoever. It’s just a passion, and he’s making it work for him. I’ve been up a few times and helped him out with bits and pieces. I think that’s my favorite. It’s like doing it in your garden shed kind of thing. He produces a really nice spirit.

I read that your father worked in the whisky industry in Scotland.

That’s right. He started at Inver House and then went to work for Glenlivet Distillers. He died in 1984. He was production director of Glenlivet at the time.

What would he have thought of you going to Asia to make whiskey?

That’s a really, really good question. Glenlivet sold out to Seagram’s in the early ’80s. They didn’t want to be owned by a Japanese company; they actively pursued Seagram’s to buy them so that Suntory couldn’t get them. Different times, I suppose. … For someone who never meant to follow in his footsteps, I think he’d be quite pleased with it. I left school at 16 with no qualifications, and I’ve had a great life. I’ve done very well out of it.

You shared an article on Facebook about the “elitist snobbery” in whiskey, and you said you’ve “been banging on about” it for 20 years. Can you elaborate on that?

Over the years, I’ve traveled the world, talking about whiskey and doing tastings and all that. All these people tell you: “You must have water in your whiskey. You must do this. You must do that.” You know, if you find something and you want to put Coca-Cola in it, put Coca-Cola in it. If that’s what you really like, don’t let anyone tell you what to do. Don’t buy an expensive bottle of whiskey and put Coca-Cola in it, but take it the way you want it. If you want ice in it, put ice in it.

Anything else you’d like to say?

I’ve enjoyed Virginia. I’ve enjoyed touring about the states. When I finished at Virginia Distillery, I took some time, and I drove right across the country, visiting different distilleries and breweries, all sorts of different things. I think it’s fantastic, the different innovations that are coming out of different people. I’m still pretty confident that the American single malt made in the Scottish style is going to be very, very big. You’ve got guys like Westland, Balcones, Copperworks in Seattle—they’re all producing really, really nice spirits.

There’s a committee got together—and it must be pretty close to being done now—to have American single malt classed as its own category with TTB [Tax and Trade Bureau]. That’s slowly going through the TTB system. That’ll be a huge boost for them because that guarantees them shelf space as a single entity. I’m really looking forward to having been a very small cog in that wheel—launching American single malt in America.

Virginia craft breweries scored 4 medals at the 2017 Great American Beer Festival in Denver, Colorado. The national beer competition is presented by the Brewers association. Winning the only gold medal for the Commonwealth was Norfolk’s Benchtop Brewing Company for its Mermaid’s Scorn in the Leipzig-style/Contemporary Gose category. Silver medals went to Wild Wolf Brewing Company of Nellyford for its American Stout in the American Stout category, and Bristol’s Studio Brew’s The Ferguson in the Oatmeal Stout category. Dulles-based Ocelot Brewing Company won a bronze medal for its Powers of Observation in the Baltic-style Porter category.

There were a total of 98 beer categories covering 161 different beer styles (including all subcategories), establishing the best examples of each style in the country.

Winners were chosen out of 7,923 competition entries from 2,217 breweries in 50 states plus Washington, D.C. (a 15 percent and 24 percent increase respectively from the 7,301 entries and 1,783 breweries in 2016).

The competition took place in six sessions over a period of three days and was judged by 276 beer experts from 13 countries, including the U.S. In addition to commercial brewery entries, the judging panel also evaluated 118 Pro-Am entries. The competition was made possible with the help of 365 volunteers.

(The Osfolk family is ready to celebrate 20th Anniversary of Bier Garden in Olde Towne Portsmouth)

By Jeff Maisey

I arrived at Olde Towne Portsmouth’s Bier Garden around 10 AM one morning, and sitting at a dining room table was Dad (Anton) Osfolk, as he often is, peeling potatoes by hand for the day’s freshly made German Potato Salad.

In the kitchen, son Kevin is busy prepping for the Friday lunch crowd. Mom (Hannelore) Osfolk is buzzing around making certain everything is tidy. Daughter Stefanie is doing the supply orders from her laptop at the bar. It’s family teamwork just as it has been for nearly two decades.

The Bier Garden will celebrate in 20th anniversary on Saturday, September 30 with its annual Oktoberfest event featuring a large traditional oompah band, ceremonial kegs of beer shipped over from Germany, strongman competitions, and lots of made-from-scratch food. This year’s Oktoberfest is on the grounds of the Ambassador Club in Portsmouth from noon to 9 PM.

I’ve always been drawn to the restaurant with its Old World charm. There are several exceptional seating options ranging from an outdoor traditional Bavarian beer garden to the indoor, cozy pantry-like dining rooms, and the rear bar featuring high seats with tables as a mural of the historic town of Rothenburg.

It was at the bar that I sat down with Stefanie and asked her to share the Osfolk story of success in the restaurant/beer business.

How did it all start 20 years ago?

It was all four of us. My brother and I worked downtown at different restaurants. We said, “There’s so much potential down here, why don’t we do something about it?”

We convinced mom and dad to start this whirlwind adventure. We knew mom could cook; dad could build; Kevin was going to bartend, and I was going to wait tables.

We opened it together in October of 1997 and within six months we all had to quit our other jobs just to do this full time.

What was in this space before the Bier Garden?

We take up six different spaces as we’ve grown. The first spot was a place called Weiner World, a hot dog store. We then moved into a section that was Pfeiffer Book Store. Then, where the bar is, was a business called Antique Adventures. Now, the Bier Garden Gift Shop went into what was a catering business. It was a doctor’s office in the early 1900s.

Can you share with us the concept of featuring traditional German food in this market as we have many current and retired military folks who passed through Germany at some point?

I’m shocked every day to see how many people come here who were stationed in Germany or have family that lived there. They miss the food.

Our food is Southern German, which is very similar to Southern (American) country food – country fried steak, potato salad. They are comfort foods.

For many years the Bier Garden was an oasis for beer lovers with your unmatched selection of European beers in bottles and on tap. Can you discuss this facet of the business?

Right now we have close to 400 bottles and 22 on draft. Out of all of the taps we only allow two American. It’s just who we are. We tried to dabble in the (American) craft beer. It’s just not a part of who we are.

Some of these beers have been brewed for over 1,000 years and you just cannot compete with the quality that it brings. We’re finding the craft beer market has opened things up to a lot of people who would never drink beer before. Once they find something certain styles they like, like a Belgian wit, and then they come here and find a traditional, real Belgian wit like St. Bernardus Wit, and they go, “Oh, my god. This is what it is supposed to taste like.” We’re seeing a lot of people start at craft and come back to us.

I understand you sell more Aventinus than any other restaurant on earth. Can you talk about some of those core beers that put Bier Garden on the world map?

I knew that we had the record for a few years. When Susanna Hecht came here last year for a Schneider Weisse beer dinner I asked her how many years we had that title. She looked at me very puzzled and said, “Of course, you still have it.” So 19 years running we’ve had the record for selling more Aventinus than anybody in the entire world, including their restaurant in Munich.

Another one of those is St. Bernardus. We just got back from a trip where we were acknowledged for being the third top seller of St. Bernardus Tripel in the US. We sell more than anybody on the East Coast.

Remind us how your parent came to America and the origin of the Osfolk family?

My parents were raised in southern Germany, close to Stuttgart. Both of them were born outside of Germany because on the War. That’s where all the family still is.

My parents immigrated into the United States in 1963. Oddly enough, they came right to Norfolk because my dad had a distant cousin who lived here and that sponsored them.

My dad had a brick-making business.

Your parents are a real draw here at the restaurant. People love to chat with them. Can you talk about their popularity with customers?

Mom and dad definitely don’t want to stay home. Dad works three days a week, but mom is here every day. She oversees everything. All the recipes are hers.

I think their favorite part is still sitting down and talking to people.

The gift shop is part German supermarket, part wine and beer store, part retail gifts. Can you talk about the importance of this addition?

We had a gift shop about 15 years ago in part of a building we no longer have. It went on the backburner for a long time. About two years ago we acquired the building that was directly behind us and we have the space. I think we’re going to call it the Bier Garden Gift Shop & Market. Like you said it is like a grocery store. It’s also a gift shop with Bier Garden memorabilia, T-shirts, notebooks, hats, coasters…we also sell all the traditional foods, cake mixes, honey, coffee, traditional wines. People are flocking in for the wines. Germany has fantastic wine.

The incandescent fury of a seductress scorned, fueled by ethnic hate, lights up the Harrison Opera House stage when Camille Saint-Saens’ Samson and Delilah opens Virginia Opera’s 2017-18 Season.

Principal Conductor & Artistic Advisor Adam Turner describes a visually lush, thematically challenging show that moves the familiar Biblical tale of Hebrew strong man Samson and his fatal attraction with his Philistine femme fatale to an unspecified “location in the 1930s,” in which “the Philistines are a ruling fascist party whose symbol permeates the production.”

That symbol is not a swastika, Turner explained in response to a specific question, but rather an emblem that represents the Philistine god Dagon, though the use of it on armbands, which he mentioned, is bound to link the Virginia Opera Philistines to the real fascists of the 20th Century.

If this production sparks controversy, it won’t be the first time this opera has done so. (Turner is pleased that productions like this one can get audiences “engaged,” and sounds unworried about conflict.)

Parisian audiences initially reacted badly to the idea of Biblical characters on a theatrical stage, so the true premiere of the piece, the libretto of which was written in French, was not staged until some 6 or 7 years after a French preview performance of sorts, and about 4 years after the piece was truly finished.

It was only after the celebrity pianist-conductor-composer and man of many musical parts Franz Liszt threw his support behind the French Jewish composer’s work that a true premiere took place in the German city of Weimar in 1877, with the libretto translated into German.

French audiences did not see it until 1890, and it supposedly took the intervention of King Edward VII to get the opera its first fully staged production in England in 1909. A planned London staging in 1893 had to be reduced to a concert performance, because of official objections to the intersection of the Bible and the Stage.

(The VO version will be sung in French, with supertitles.)

Samson and Delilah is one of those shows usually associated with grandiose spectacles and huge casts. (Apparently Cecile B. DeMille, that groundbreaking film pioneer and showman, whose epic movies are still a watchword for the spectacular, was influenced by seeing the Saint-Saens’ opera when he was a youth.)

Virginia Opera, says Turner, “brings an intimacy to these grand scale pieces,” with the company’s “eye for efficiency” which “brings a laser like focus to the five principals.”

He still describes an impressive show, with a ‘beautiful set” and “gorgeous costumes” designed by Court Watson, whose international design credits stretch from Beijing to off-Broadway to Berlin. Watson just happens to be a Chesapeake native and graduate of our own Governor’s School for the Arts, with an undergrad degree from VCU, and an MFA from New York University. This is his first show for Virginia Opera, but Turner adds “I hope it will be the first of many.”

Stage director Paul Curran comes to Norfolk with a resume rich in credits from the Met, La Scala, Covent Garden, the Bolshoi Theatre and a host of other such venues.

The Harrison Opera House welcomes a trio of familiar performers among the principals in this season opener. Katharine Goeldner’s Delilah follows up on her Herodias in Salome here. Derek Taylor, who plays Samson, was last on the Harrison stage as the death defying romantic lead of Calaf in Turandot. Michael Chioldi, the High Priest of Dagon and hence Samson’s prime opponent, played the vengeful clown Tonio in Virginia Opera’s recent Pagliacci.

The other two, Stefan Szkafarowsky as the Old Hebrew who warns Samson against Delilah, and Ruben Casas as Samson’s victim Abimélech, boast world spanning credentials with the names of the Met, New York City Opera, Chicago Lyric and the like prominent.

Samson and Delilah is best known for two of deceptive Delilah’s seductive arias, “Printemps qui commence” and “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix,” and for the frankly sensuous pagan Bacchanale danced in notably premature celebration by the Philistines. (That’s probably the bit that struck DeMille’s fancy.)

With what Turner calls its “sumptuous music” as well as its visual appeal and even its “political references,” he promises that “People will be swept away!”

Samson and Delilah

Camille Saint-Saens, libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire

Sept. 29, Oct 1 & 3

Virginia Opera

Harrison Opera House

160 W Virginia Beach Blvd.

Norfolk, Virginia 23510

www.vaopera.org

1-866-673-7282

(Additional performances in Richmond and Fairfax)

]]>Grade Old Dominion University an A in Artshttp://veermag.com/2017/09/grade-old-dominion-university-an-a-in-arts/
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(Dr. Cullen Strawn is Old Dominion University’s Executive Director for the Arts)

By Jeff Maisey

If you’ve visited the campus of Old Dominion University recently, you’ve likely noticed quite an upgrade to its performing and visual arts buildings, whether the Goode Theater, Barry Arts Building or the Gordon Art Galleries.

I imagine any high school student touring the facilities in search of higher education in the field of performing or visual art would be impressed.

Beyond the amenities, the school has also enhanced its education programs as well as its public performances.

I recently caught up with Dr. Cullen Strawn, Old Dominion University’s Executive Director for the Arts, to learn more about ODU’s growing arts efforts. Strawn holds a BMus in performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as well as MA and PhD degrees in folklore and ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington. Hailing from an extended family of musicians, he has recorded and performed on a wide range of instruments including donso ngoni, kora, soku, jenbe, and balani (West African strings and percussion), fretless banjo and bass, fiddle, saxophones, and guitars in traditional and popular genres.

Cullen has won major fellowships and grants including the Fulbright-IIE and Fulbright-Hays for ethnographic field research on aspects of arts and culture in the United States and West Africa. In addition to working as an audio technician, software developer, and managing editor of the Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis (EVIA) Digital Archive, he has served as curator at the Musical Instrument Museum and consulted for major arts and educational organizations including Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Endowment for the Arts. At Old Dominion University, Cullen oversees public-facing arts initiatives spanning the arts.

Here’s our interview.

How has ODU sought to enhance both its performing and visual arts education programs as well as offering students and the public an experience rich in culture through concert performances by touring musicians?

Arts@ODU is based in the College of Arts and Letters and has grown to the point of producing nearly 200 public arts events each year. The programming is a mix of professional and student work across fields of music, dance, theatre, film, visual arts, and creative writing.

Regarding concerts by touring musicians, the F. Ludwig Diehn Concert Series takes place in Chandler Recital Hall, which is an intimate and acoustically wonderful space where the public can experience top-caliber artists performing and teaching. This fall, Indian sarod master Amjad Ali Khan as well as the Jasper String Quartet and trumpeter Brandon Ridenour appear, with three additional artists visiting in the spring.

This Diehn Series is an example of an enhancement that benefits both the public and students. It is funded by an endowment established at the Hampton Roads Community Foundation and originally made possible by a gift from composer F. Ludwig Diehn. The funding keeps ticket prices very low for public concerts and also creates educational opportunities for students who receive scholarships and are critiqued by the visiting artists in public master classes and workshops.

Can you share with us the recent and ongoing effort to build on-campus arts performance and exhibit space?

In the fall of 2015 we celebrated new educational and performance spaces on Monarch Way—the Barry Arts Building, Hixon Art Studio, and Brock Commons amphitheater. These followed the construction of the Goode Theatre, a black box and film soundstage facility beside the Gordon Art Galleries and one block from University Theatre, the proscenium space facing Hampton Boulevard.

The Diehn Center for the Performing Arts on West 49th Street also saw a recent expansion resulting in a recording studio, percussion studio, choir room, computer lab, dance studio facilities, and other educational spaces. Currently under construction at the corner of Hampton Boulevard and West 43rd Street is the Barry Art Museum, which will be a 24,000-square-foot space featuring the collection of Richard and Carolyn Barry as well as ongoing changing exhibitions. The Museum is slated to open during the fall of 2018.

ODU is so fortunate to have the support of local donors who value arts both within the University setting and throughout Norfolk and Hampton Roads. Their generosity along with the vision and efforts of President Broderick and other key leaders have resulted in these new facilities, which totaled upward of $80 million in construction alone. We look forward to additional spaces and programming opportunities in the future.

Have these efforts expanded enrollment and funding for ODU’s arts programs?

The University has stated that it aims to be the recognized leader for the regional arts community. Supporting this goal is the construction of performance and exhibit spaces, and related goals include cultivating funding for public and educational programming, and increasing engagement with local communities. We will work toward integrating all of the arts by creating programming such as street festivals and outdoor performances in the new arts village, all while seeking expanded enrollments and funding.

The Madrigal Banquet is a unique experience. Can you tell us how this event originated and its current function mixing period music, food and drink?

The Madrigal Banquets are based on a traditional form of dinner theatre that celebrates winter holidays with Renaissance-themed music, food, and histories. ODU’s interpretations center on a particular region or country each year. The dinner includes several courses that are introduced by songs and separated by a comedic play. Students in the ODU Madrigal Singers ensemble dress in period costumes and perform, and instrumental music is played by the Collegium Musicum and the Sacbut Ensemble, which are two ODU groups focusing on early European music.

This year’s banquets are unusual in that they are themed around the time of the American Revolutionary War. The music and dialogue will reference that history while the performers appear in their European Renaissance attire. This is the 43rd year of the Madrigal Banquets, and the ODU Madrigal Singers ensemble actually dates back to the early 1950s. The ensemble and banquets have enjoyed different leadership through the years and still offer students opportunities to expand their repertoire of Renaissance and Baroque Music.

This year’s Literary Festival (October 1-5) is celebrating its 40th season. What are some of this year’s highlights and how do they complement the “Lust for Life” theme?

Highlights of the Festival this year include the President’s Lecture Series speaker Roz Chast and British Book Award winner Garth Greenwell. These are authors who bring a lust for the experience of living—loving, laughing, escaping, fighting, screaming, and even dying are within their scope. In Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Chast gives readers a sense of her fierce love and dark humor as she becomes her parents’ caregiver. Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You has been called “a searching and compassionate meditation on the slipperiness of desire.” Other internationally renowned authors will appear in the Festival, which includes nearly 20 readings and events from October 1st through 5th. We bring amazing people to read alongside our own amazing people, including two National Book Award Finalists on the faculty at ODU.

Literary Festival events are open to the community and free, with the exception of one ticketed theatre performance—an adaptation of the lusty “Lysistrata” by playwright Ellen McLaughlin.

“The Art of Trains” and the painting of Susana Coffey are your major visual art exhibits for fall. How did these two ideas come together?

The subject of trains is one that resonates with people the world over. Countless songs and stories have been composed about trains in the human experience, and the visual arts too offer a wealth of train-themed works. Norfolk is home to Norfolk Southern Corporation, whose retired Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, David Goode, is a collector of such art. David and his wife, Susan, are also ardent supporters of the arts and have given generously to ODU, among other arts organizations.

“The Art of Trains” explores the influence of the train, especially the steam engine, on the growth of America as a nation with 50 paintings, prints, and photographs primarily from the Goodes’ collection, and 13 additional selections from the collections of their daughter Christina Goode, Jay Althouse and Sally Albrecht, photographer Matthew Malkiewicz, and ODU’s Baron and Ellin Gordon Collection of Self-Taught Art.

Complementing the theme of trains is the exhibition “Transit: The Art of Revelation in the Paintings of Susanna Coffey.” Trains transport us from one place to another, and this show moves us through life stages by working with the idea that personhood is fluid and opposed to the singular and fixed. It features a book of woodcut prints and 23 paintings including Coffey’s self-portraits, which have won great favor with critics for more than 30 years.

A free, joint reception for these two exhibitions will be held at the Gordon Galleries on October 20th from 7 to 9 p.m., and we encourage the public to take part.

Student dance and musical recitals, theater performance and the senior art show are important highlights of their education experience. What feedback do you get from students regarding their “showtime” experience?

The feedback that I receive reflects transformative experiences. Either students are excited about reaching a new plane in their work or they are experiencing processes of presenting themselves and their work to the general public (not merely to their peers) for the first time.

My favorite bits of feedback tend to be ones that involve moments of crossing boundaries or bridging gaps. It is possible as a student to be so into one’s own studies that the connections between and among arts do not seem apparent. But students can have revelations by experiencing the abilities of others in a different discipline, and here I think of a comment that I received last spring from a student in the M.F.A. Creative Writing Program. She relayed a beautiful discovery of continuity between music, language, sound, and meaning. I will hold back her name here but share her words as I received them:

“I’ve grown up listening to music. When I was younger, my mother put me in cello lessons, and as I got older I played piano. Music, while I enjoyed it, remained a chore; 30 minutes of practice to accomplish every day. It was an anathema to me. Something I delighted in, but still, after years of association I could not understand. After attending the Eighth Blackbird concert, I was struck by narrative flow inherent in the music. The way in which each instrument would play with the same melody line instilling its own rhythm, tone, and voice; each repetition becoming more colorful and graphic. As a poet, I found this way of music’s desire for connection; to be heard and understood by the listener. That the process of living is external. As a poet, I crave truth, and most often I find that truth in being heard. Being understood is a sincere human longing, and in this longing we reach out despite all the fear that we are alone. How could I have gone this long creating distinctions between music and writing? Listening to Eighth Blackbird not only helped me in my own poetry connecting how sound relates meaning, but it helped validate why we even make art.”

How can the local community be more supportive of student arts at Old Dominion University?

I cannot overemphasize the value that we place on the presence of local community members at arts events, and I encourage folks to visit odu.edu/arts frequently to stay updated on the wealth of programming that we have. Universities should contribute to the arts and cultures of their regions and help create quality of life. We want to enrich and foster community, and we need the participation of a diverse range of people in order to achieve this. If guests are moved to support the arts beyond attending events and enrolling in courses, our website also has information on exploring opportunities for philanthropy. Still other forms of support are limitless, and we love to be in such conversations.

Can you discuss the Arts & Entrepreneurial program?

Our new Certificate in Arts and Entrepreneurship is based in the Institute for the Humanities, and it is designed to help students channel their creativity into sustainable careers in the arts world. The 2016 Survey on Artist Professional Development Needs by the Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship found that a large number of artists want to complement their creativity with business and communication skills that can help them with sustainability and innovation in their professions.

We explore creating sustainable business plans, grant writing, fundraising, social media marketing, cultivating and engaging stakeholders, arts administration, and social entrepreneurial and design thinking skills. We pair these skills with tools drawn from studying the social, political, economic, and cultural value of arts-based innovations, and offer courses to students interested in studio or the performing arts.

The certificate ends with a capstone project in which students develop a proposal for an arts-based program. They then present their proposal to stakeholders in Hampton Roads for critique, feedback, and possible implementation. This is open to any graduate student enrolled in any graduate program at ODU. Students not seeking a degree can also earn it as a standalone certificate, and in some instances high-performing juniors and seniors can enroll.

She has a couple of kids, ages four and 10. They’ve radically changed her work life, though not in the ways you’d expect. She’s working on a memoir, chipping away at telling her past rather than writing anthems for the present. And she’s headed back out on the road after a summer with family at home in New Orleans.

Out there on the road, she still has plenty to say. “Binary,” her new album, is uncompromising (natch), powerful, and catchy. It’s among the best of her career. The song titles make clear what’s been on her mind: “Binary,” “Pacifist’s Lament,” “Deferred Gratification,” “Alrighty.” She wrote it before the election, but it could be a reaction to Nov. 8.

During a wide-ranging interview from her home in New Orleans, still suffering flooding from the summer rains, she talked about politics, of course, as well as her changing perspective on her work. As always, words, her words, often spoken in a thoughtful torrent of ideas, form center stage.

First up, “Binary,” her latest creation that surprised her with the discovery she could still write a line that made even her pause.

She sat down to write “Play God,” a demand for reproductive civil rights with the idea of doing something different, she says during a long, captivating interview. “It started out…This is going to sound weird, because nobody could ever imagine what’s in my head, but I was listening to Missy Elliott tracks. And Muddy Waters. I just watched some documentary. In the back of my mind, I wondered if I could write a thudding, bragging song not typical for me, more typical in the hip hop world,” she says. “So that’s where I started. I was on my own at 16. Fuck you all…”

I was done at 16

Using my momma’s key

It was all on me

It was all on me

Weren’t no free rides

Weren’t no IOU’s

I pulled my weight, yeah

I paid my dues

And I showed up to enlist

On the first day of recruits

But then she was in a hotel room writing on tour and those things — the things that have weighed on her and made her a beacon for 25 years — began percolating. “And the song mutated as I was writing into a reproductive freedom anthem,” she says. “I sort of leapt from taking care of myself since I was 16 so I’m not a dependent and should not be treated as such. I’m a full contributing member. I deserve all my civil rights. As a woman, my civil rights include reproductive freedom.”

Just leave this one thing to me

‘Cause I’m my brother’s keeper

Every chance I can

I pay my taxes

Like any workin man

And I feel I’ve earned

My right to choose

You don’t get to play God, man, I do

“I remember when I wrote the line ‘You don’t get to play god. I do.’ I stopped and I had one of those moments that I hadn’t had in years. Oh shit. Can I say this?” she says. “What’s going to happen to me? It kind of pleased me that I was having one of those moments again. I felt like that was a good sign.”

There are good signs throughout “Binary,” her 20th album and the first since 2014’s “Allergic to Water.”

DiFranco’s lyrics and statements get most of the attention, but she’s a songwriter without bounds. As usual on the new disc, she is a sonic shapeshifter, slipping from deep grooves to chamber folk to indie rock. She says it’s hard not to think about how the songs will sound on stage when she’s composing.

“So when I’m writing a poem like “Binary” the second thought in my head is how can I make this danceable so I can pull it out on stage so people will not be like this is five minutes of waiting for the next song,” she says. “Put a little groove behind it and you can get away with sending poems to the world and hopefully nobody will notice.”

Is she influenced by music she hears? What is she listening to these days?

“I guess I would say I’m not listening to a lot of stuff these days, once again the arrow pointing back to the kids,” she says. “I get to listen to whatever she’s listening to – my ten year old. Growing up with two musicians, luckily she knows some shit. Lately she has been absolutely obsessed with the “Hamilton” soundtrack. I have been too, I think it’s an amazing piece of work.”

She writes “from my spleen” and then takes the tunes in to her band. She’s more collaborative these days. “I never approached music with I want to make a track that emulates something I’ve heard. I tend to come from a more primary, primeval place,” she adds, laughing.

Primeval with the deep dive inspired by science. Listen to her talk about the title cut, “Binary.”

“I’m really interested in neuroscience, quantum physics, all the stuff that’s really beyond my ability to understand,” she says. “I take intuitively away from these things what I can and I have been really intrigued lately by approaching feminism from a scientific perspective. I find it really refreshing to talk about patriarchy, for instance, in terms of brain science. We have this masculine side of our nature, each of us. We have a feminine side, each of us. In balance, I think our species realizes its potential. Out of balance, we have eternally what we see around us, these kind of nagging social diseases. ”

For DiFranco, having children has changed the balance of her work life, though, of course, not in the ways you might expect. For one thing, she’s been home for the summer “the proverbial kids out of school family break shit.”

“I do think my children had a pretty powerful effect, but it’s not really that sort of sort of archetypical perspective change that parents talk about like suddenly I’m worried about the future. That was always on my mind. I’ve been pretty politicized and worried about all of that,” she says. “My kids had an almost opposite effect of wrenching me away from everything. The worry, the fun, my work. I’m fortunate enough that I live my work. Until I had kids I never had a reason to stop. I was just sort of on my hamster wheel of creating songs and driving around and playing them for people.”

“I think my kids forcing me off of my little treadmill gave me a measure of perspective of what I was doing or not doing,” she adds. “It forced me to infuse my process with a lot of patience and a lot more time. I think that improved and certainly informed my songwriting. I think it also affected my performance. I’m definitely in an era when I’m more grateful to be on stage. ”

“There’s nothing like being a parent to make your love your job all over again.”

She says she probably would have eventually awakened. “I think I sort of squeezed my towel very dry on stage for many years and I made much too much of myself available to the public,” she says. “I needed to step back a lot more than I did and fill the well like you say. I think the records I’m making these days are better in general.”

“I’m able to step back from a three day (recording) session for six months and realize what I did,” she adds. “Those six months never happened before kids for me.”

She’s learned to stop being that teenager who operated on her own, who did everything herself. Tchad Blake, who has worked with The Pretenders and Andrew Bird, produced the new album. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver lends a hand as well. “Now that I have a team of people who can do things better than me, I’ll never go back,” she says.

The focus of her work offstage these days is something only she can do. She’s been working on a memoir. “It’s a little bit of a strange moment for me,” she says.

After the election, she started getting calls for an anthem for the times. It felt odd not to respond, but the book comes first.

“You can only create so much at any given time and also keep children alive and all that,” she says. “So I have not not been writing a lot of songs because I’m trying to make a book. Oddly it’s a book about the past. In the moment there’s a lot going on politically in the present to speak to, but I’m writing about the past. My hope is if i can finish this book somehow it will serve some purpose in this moment.”

What’s the difference between writing songs and writing a book?

“Kind of night and day,” she says. “Songwriting is like an event. You have to sort of position yourself with the sun and the moon and the moment and something comes through if you’re lucky. Writing (a book) so far I’m a novice, but it’s just like whittling. It’s almost like manual labor compared to a song. It’s just a daily chipping away at this slab of stone or hunk of wood and trying to retain the vision long enough to sculpt something.”

Stepping back has caused a reconsideration of her back catalog. She sat down recently to learn an old song, “Willing to Fight,” that seems right for her fall tour. What’s it like going back to those early tunes?

“It’s really, really painful,” she says. “I have so much regret about my recordings. I feel like a lot of decent songs got kind of fucked over in the recording studio by me and my choices…I had my own very tweaked-out destructive emotional self at the helm. So it’s really hard for me to listen back to recordings that sound kind of hysterical or shrill or haphazard. Every mistake that can be made in terms of sonic quality or performance or production, I’ve made them. It’s tough for me to go mining into my own history.”

DiFranco started writing songs when she was 14 and became emancipated at 15. She started Righteous Babe Records while still a teen.

She seems born with something to say. What tugged and pulled and cajoled her into music instead or prose or poetry or some other form of art?

“From this vantage point I see music as the universal language of the right brain, the intuitive emotional part of our consciousness,” she says. “Words can take you only so far. The music can take you the rest of the way. The music can tell you what the words can’t.”

Of course, the race to space did not start a century ago, but it was in 1917, as World War 1 was raging, that the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory was founded and work on Langley Field begun. (Two years before, Congress had created NASA’s ancestor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics: NACA.)

The Symphony launches these three concerts with contemporary composer Randall Svane’s Quantum Flight, a short piece that spins through the various parts of the orchestra with what VSO Music Director JoAnn Falletta describes as the sound of “a whirling galaxy.”

That’s followed by another recent work, The Bass Whisperer, co-composed by Conni Ellisor and its featured soloist, 5 time Grammy winning electric bass player and Newport News native, Victor L. Wooten. (Wooten might be the first VSO soloist to be cited by rock mag Rolling Stone for instrumental excellence.)

Gustav Holst’s familiar work, The Planets, termed by Falletta “a brilliant piece from beginning to end,” makes up the second half of the program.

Quantum Flight has a soaring sound that suggests conventional flight, and then, after hints of Glass and other minimalists, breaks through into something like lyricism, as if slipping the “surly bonds” of Earth’s gravity and departing our atmosphere.

Falletta notes that Svane “has family in our area,” and will be at the concerts to speak about his piece. She calls Quantum Fight both “a dazzling tribute to the galaxy” and “a brilliant way to open the program.”

This the first time that the Virginia Symphony has played a Svane composition, and even Falletta’s first time conducting anything he has written.

“It’s exciting,” she concludes.

The Bass Whisperer is another piece to which Falletta applies the term “exciting.” Actually, she said on the phone it is “very, very exciting,” especially when it “lets him (Wooten) cut loose” with the improvisation which is part of the “genius of his work on the electric bass.”

She calls this 38-minute work “A very successful marriage between a classical orchestra and jazz improvisation.”

While Falletta says that Whisperer is linked to the Svane and Holst pieces primarily through the geographical coincidence of Wooten’s Newport News upbringing, it is difficult not to hear, after an other-worldly sort of count-down, something like a pulse-jet propulsive rhythm in the work’s opening moments, and a Milky Way etherealism cropping up throughout.

“He’s become one of the greatest and most lauded bass players of all time. The fact that he’s going to open our season is a great idea.”

“The electric base is right at home in the middle of the orchestra.”

Gustav Holst called his seven movement orchestral suite The Planets a “series of mood pieces.” Like Langley it dates to the WW1 era, when Pluto was unknown.

“Mars, The Bringer of War” and “Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity” are, Falletta agrees, the most well known movements, but there is much more to the work.

“The movements are much less about the planets than about the gods for whom they are named; he makes that clear with the subtitles… It’s spectacular writing — Mercury is a perfect interpretation of the god Mercury, this kind of quicksilver, darting, light music…“Saturn the Bringer of Old Age,” a tolling of the clock…eerie…“Uranus, The Magician,” a magician of the Dark kind…then of course, “Neptune, The Mystic,” an expression of the eternity.”

Finally, in an “expression of time going on…representing the unknown in this musical way,” the piece fades away, like a spaceship leaving the galaxy for the infinite reaches of the universe.

The Chrysler Museum of Art has hired Corey Piper, Ph.D., as the Brock Curator of American Art. An art historian specializing in 19th-century and early 20th-century American art, Piper brings a breadth of curatorial knowledge to the Museum.

“Corey’s knowledge and experience in 19th-century art and culture match so well with the strengths of our collection, including his focus on painting and the natural world. We are so pleased to have him join the Chrysler team,” said Chrysler Museum Director Erik Neil.

Piper holds a doctorate from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on imagery of hunting in 19th century American art. He holds a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of South Carolina. He previously served as a curatorial associate at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) and has held fellowships at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. “We’re delighted to have Dr. Piper join the Chrysler team. He brings substantial expertise in American Art, as well as a unique perspective and willingness to challenge conventional approaches. We very much look forward to great accomplishments with this key part of the Chrysler’s collection,” said Lloyd DeWitt, chief curator of the Chrysler Museum.

Piper eagerly anticipates pairing his academic interests with the Chrysler’s commitment to enrich and transform lives through art. “I look forward to continuing the Chrysler’s record of producing engaging and thought-provoking installations and exhibitions. I am interested in opening up the American collection to explore a broader array of perspectives in order to tell a more extensive story of American art and history that resonates with all of the Chrysler’s visitors,” Piper said.

Piper’s broad experience includes curatorial work with VMFA, where he worked on a number of exhibitions and gallery installations and served as co-curator for Catching Sight: The World of the British Sporting Print. His scholarship has been published in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, The Burlington Magazine and The British Art Journal.

“I have long admired the Chrysler’s phenomenal collection of American art for both its well-known masterpieces and unexpected gems. So many works in the collection stand as important milestones in the history of American art, and I am thrilled for the opportunity to work closely with these objects and continue to push new discoveries in the collection,” Piper said.

Recently, I was treated to a preview of Wayne’s World. No, not that Wayne’s World. Not even close.

No, this is the world that Wayne White, of Pee Wee’s Playhouse fame, has created for MOCA based on the two-day Battle of Hampton Roads when, in 1862, the ironclads known as the Monitor and the Merrimac (or Virginia) battled for some three hours in the James River. The Confederate efforts to break the Union Blockade were futile, but the preeminence of ironclads over wooden hull ships was cemented.

White, a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a Civil War buff who grew up drawing the Monitor and Merrimac as a kid, has chosen to focus more on what he considers the human narrative of the battle, especially on board the Union Navy’s USS Monitor. As we dodged his 10-member crew hustling a set through the gallery strewn with cardboard, Styrofoam, foam rubber, and plywood, and stopped for a quick design consultation regarding a sculpture being fabricated on site, White generously shared his vision with me, dressed in a gas station attendant’s jump suit bearing an above-the-pocket patch monogrammed with his name.

With a BFA in painting, and a propensity for mounting wild ass puppet shows in college, White first made his way on what he calls the “mean streets of New York City” as a freelancer hustling for work as an illustrator and cartoonist and still making puppets with materials scavenged from those mean streets. His big break came in 1986—one that he reflects “changed his life considerably…I was suddenly in demand” with the success of Pee Wee’s Playhouse for which White served as puppet master, making and performing several of the major marionettes.

He spent the next 30 years in television—kids’ shows, rock videos (e.g. Peter Gabriel and Smashing Pumpkins), and commercials—and garnered Emmy awards in the process. Eventually, his work took him from New York to Los Angeles but, the whole time, he confesses to longing to “get back to my own thing, as all artists do.” So he kept painting. Now his “word art” paintings– reimagined thrift store landscapes into which he embeds enigmatic and irreverent words and phrases brightly painted in 3-D perspective–bring high prices and respect in the “fine art” world.

Impossible to label, the banjo-playing White is a multi-media maker: a painter—he also makes figurative and abstract work–sculptor, art director, animator, illustrator, and puppeteer. He is married to graphic novelist Mimi Pond and is the father to two grown children. His predilection for the do-it-yourself-make-it-up-as-you-go approach is chronicled in Beauty is Embarrassing, a documentary of his life. And two major exhibitions in Chattanooga, Wayne-O-Rama and Thrill after Thrill, a retrospective, sum up his life’s work to date though through different lenses.

Without giving too much away, visitors to Monitorium can expect to be immersed in an ironclad world—halved and painted Styrofoam spheres look remarkably like rivets—of both stationary and animated puppets that visitors can work themselves, portholes offering views of the Merrimac and a sinking wooden ship, a depiction of the then secretary of the Navy as Neptune, a model of the Monitor worn like a hat by John Erickson (with a surprise inside), a 15-foot puppet shoveling coal, and a puppet theatre created as a likeness of John Warden whose beard will open like curtains.

“You’re not going to hurt my feelings,” said a crew member—one of those who the artist fondly and wryly describes as his “groupies and gypsies”—when conferring with White about how to add an arm to a cardboard figure, roughly drawn in vine charcoal. Within this focused and busy-but-chill collaborative workspace/gallery with its emerging “19th C. science fiction vibe,” I don’t imagine many feelings get hurt at all. That wouldn’t be Wayne’s Way.